Angus Sibley: Does Paul Ryan Follow Ayn Rand or St. Thomas Aquinas?

Angus Sibley at National Catholic Reporter on the ways in which Paul Ryan's Randian ideas--"extreme individualism; absolute belief in free markets and the sanctity of private property; adulation of entrepreneurs and traders; and withering contempt for the state"--are seriously at odds with Catholic social teaching:

Ryan's willingness to see the superrich still richer can only be justified on the anarcho-capitalist principle that "taxation is theft," which reflects the libertarian belief that one has absolute, unlimited rights to whatever assets one lawfully acquires. But the church explicitly teaches that property rights are not absolute. Hear Pope John Paul II: "The right to private property is subordinated to the right to common use, to the fact that goods are meant for everyone." Or St. Thomas: "Man ought to own external things not as his own, but as common, so that ... he is ready to communicate them to others in their need."

And see also Vincent Miller at America's "In All Things" blog on Ryan's (again, Randian) belief that Social Security and Medicare are "collectivist" and "socialistic," and his applauding of the privatization of Social Security in Chile by dictator Augusto Pinochet as a "moral revolution."